Rose Byrne wants a parenting manual: 'It's so challenging'

The Aussie actress, 39, stopped by AOL’s Build Studio on Wednesday to promote her new film, Juliet, Naked, and told Yahoo Lifestyle she felt she needed a manual when she first became a parent, a sentiment Ethan Hawke’s character shares in the film. “Of course, I still feel like that,” she admitted.

Rose Byrne reveals that she was six months pregnant while filming Juliet, Naked. (Photo: Build)

“It’s so challenging. Everything. From breastfeeding to having a newborn to trying to get a baby to sleep. It’s so overwhelming,” she said. Byrne has two children, Rocco and Rafa, with actor Bobby Cannavale. This past November, she gave birth to their second child, with whom she was pregnant with while filming Juliet, Naked. “I may have been six months pregnant,” she revealed on AOL’s Build interview series, which made her character, Annie, even more interesting to portray because she was “so not pregnant.” In fact, Annie starts out the story not even wanting kids, which is a far cry from how Byrne saw her own future. “I’m the youngest of four, so I come from a big family. So I sort of assumed I would [have kids],” she told Yahoo Lifestyle. “But you never know if you’ll meet someone, and all those sorts of things.”

Byrne feels “very grateful to have two healthy kids,” not to mention a wise support system to help her adjust to parenthood. “I had a wonderful woman named Esther Santana at the beginning who taught me so much. My mother taught me so much, she came over and helped me. You really lean on people who’ve done it before. I did.”